Dealing with Diaspora Dissent in Different Domains

A Conceptual Framework of State Strategies
on Foreign Social Media

Allison Koh

WZB “Digitalization and Society” Lecture Series
April 3, 2023

To set the stage… [As many of you are probably already aware…] In September of last year, the killing of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in Iran sparked anti-government protests that spread globally. Over the past few months, digital media played a massive role in documenting evidence of state repression within Iran’s borders and the transnational coordination of protests—which has included solidarity protests organized by Iranian diaspora activists such as the one in Berlin captured in this image on the left. The Iranian diaspora’s solidarity efforts were not just restricted to coordination of offline protests- they were also successful in spreading awareness through online campaigns on international platforms that went viral. One of the more viral campaigns involved women around the world—such as the journalist Masih Alinejad shown here on the right—cutting pieces of their hair in solidarity with Iranian protesters.

In the slides that follow, I will outline my preliminary arguments for why diasporas are threats on foreign platforms, and how states address the digital diasporas in this arena

Overview

Areas of Inquiry: State Strategies, Diaspora Dissent, Foreign Social Media

❓ Why do diasporas pose a unique threat to governments engaging in repression?

❓ What resources are available for states to control social media activity?

❓ How do states address diaspora dissent on foreign social media?

How do we address these questions empirically?

📊 Data and measurement

⚠️ Limitations and ethical considerations

Diasporas as Regime Threats

What is so threatening about dissent in diasporas?

“Horizontal” networks at home 🏡
(Brinkerhoff 2009; Alonso and Oiarzabal 2010; Bernal 2020)

“Vertical” networks abroad 🌏
(Keck and Sikkink 1999; Michaelsen 2018; Esberg and Siegel 2020)

➡️ Diaspora dissidents can credibly ruin a state’s international reputation.

State Motivations for Reputation Management

Why would states be incentivized to limit diaspora dissent?

Regime survival (Wright and Oñate Zúniga 2007; Holbig 2011; Esberg 2021)

Fragment cross-border connections
Discourage mobilization of potential challengers

External image management (Krcmaric 2019; Dukalskis 2021)

Evade sanctions
Promote favorable foreign policy outcomes

🔎📕 Transnational repression: Tools/tactics to intimidate and silence diaspora dissent

So why do states care about their international reputation, and why would they be incentivized to limit diaspora dissent?

There are two broad categories that encompass their many motivations for silencing diaspora dissent.

One of the foremost concerns is regime survival. By specifically targeting the diaspora, states fragment cross-border connections that might increase anti-regime mobilization. States can also benefit from discouraging mobilization of potential challengers at home and abroad if they can take on the challenge of extraterritorially silencing diaspora regime critics.

Beyond regime survival, states are also invested in external image management. As noted in the naming and shaming literature, for instance, states are interested in avoiding negative impacts on their international reputation because evidence of domestic repression or human rights abuses could result in sanctions from other states. They could also leverage a more positive international reputation to promote favorable foreign policy outcomes.

Affordances of Social Media for State Repression

What do we know? Where are the research gaps?

At Home 🏡

Abroad 🌍

Domestic Platforms

Direct control over platform policies (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013; Stockmann 2013)

States + proxies disrupt information flows (King, Pan, and Roberts 2017; Roberts 2018)

State agents contact/surveil regime threats (Dalmasso et al. 2018; Schenkkan and Linzer 2021)

Coercion-by-proxy of family/friends at home (Adamson and Tsourapas 2020; Moss, Michaelsen, and Kennedy 2022)

Foreign Platforms

State-aligned trolling/harassment (Nyst and Monaco 2018; Posetti et al. 2021)

Content blocking and platform use restrictions (Pan 2017)

State + proxies frame repressive actions

Targeted disinformation and threats

➡️ No provision over “image management”

So, given what we know about diasporas as a threat and states’ motivations for using digital technologies to control the narrative beyond their borders, what do we know about states’ capacity to control the circulation of information that tarnishes their reputation on social media? The burgeoning literature on digital repression and state information control practices highlight how states go about using social media to curtail the public sphere in their favor.

[AT HOME/DOMESTIC: MOSTLY CHINA RESEARCHERS] Within their borders, states have more direct provision over the control of information flows on social media. For domestic platforms, states more or less have a monopoly on control over platform policies. Or for states that do not have direct provision over platform policies, they can easily intervene on suppressing certain topics if they pose a threat to the regime. We are more likely to see this form of control in high-capacity states, since they have more resources to regulate a social media market that involves domestically based platforms. Much of the prominent empirical work done in this area has focused on China, which is the one of very few countries with a social media market dominated by domestic platforms. (1) The seminal work that uses computational methods to identify the motivations of governments for censorship was conducted by King Pan and Roberts, who identified that the Chinese government censors domestic platforms on the basis of collective action potential, and not necessarily on the political nature of a post. Danie Stockmann at the institutional level highlights how the commercialization of state-owned media provides the government with more resources to maintain regime stability. (2) Pro-government actors, which include those hired by the state and genuine regime loyalists, also manipulate information

[ABROAD/DOMESTIC: MOSTLY (D)TR RESEARCH] Case studies on social media and digital transnational repression predominantly highlight how states and their proxies use domestic platforms to attack diaspora regime critics. The tactics cited range from hacking to surveillance, to directly contacting them with

States still have a pretty tight grasp on the provision of content on platforms that are headquartered outside of their jurisdiction. One of the most common tactics cited in this category is content blocking, or specifically limiting content that pertains to topics that either go against state policies or in some other way threaten the state. High-capacity states can also ban or restrict foreign platform use altogether. China is of course the first state that comes to mind when it comes to using this tactic, but other states are moving in this direction as well. Iran specifically over the last few months has proposed policies that would restrict access to foreign platforms as well.

However, state strategies for information control on foreign platforms abroad has remained largely ignored in the realm of state repression. One of the main contributions of my dissertation research is to investigate how foreign platforms might be used abroad. While related empirical work is ongoing, I propose that states and their proxies can manipulate information on foreign platforms abroad to achieve the aims of justifying or positively framing repressive actions in addition to producing targeted disinformation to threaten and discredit diaspora dissidents.

I argue that states have to be more creative when using foreign platforms abroad for repression because, unlike the other three categories shown here, states have no direct provision on “image management” in this area.

Data and Measurement

Resources

Expert-curated datasets on transnational repression (Dukalskis et al. 2022)
- Global (Freedom House, Authoritarian Actions Abroad Database (AAAD)
- Regional: Central Asian Political Exiles, China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs
Social media data
- APIs: Twitter 🪦; other resources (e.g. TikTok, CrowdTangle) ❓
- [Mostly Python-based] Scrapers: snscrape, twint
Measurement with text/unstructured data
- Vitriol/Toxicity: Jigsaw’s Perspective API
- Large Language Models (LLMs) for inductive theory development; data labeling tasks

Limitations and Ethical Considerations

Limitations

More information from democracies ➡️ difficult to compare across host state regime type
Information on political exiles may not be applicable to all diaspora
Inconsistency in using ready-made measurement tools to understand variation across some dimensions (e.g. gender, language)
LLMs cannot replace humans for many labeling tasks (e.g. political stance)

Ethical considerations

⚠️ Don’t create an instruction manual for dictators!
Implications of collecting social media data in the post-API age? (Freelon 2018)

Conclusion

❓ Why do diasporas pose a unique threat to governments engaging in repression?

➡️ Credible sources of information on state repression; connections at home and abroad

❓ What resources are available for states to control social media activity?

➡️ Variation across where social media platforms and targets are based

➡️ No direct provision over “image management” on foreign platforms

❓ How do states address diaspora dissent on foreign social media?

➡️ Prioritize exiles over other diaspora

➡️ Address more indiscriminately during times of increased international attention

📊 Data and measurement

➡️ Expert-curated data on TR, social media data, machine learning models/LLMs

⚠️ Limitations and ethical considerations

➡️ Focus on information about individuals who are already in the public eye

Thank you!

koh@hertie-school.org

https://allisonkoh.github.io/

@allisonwkoh@mastodon.social🎓

@allisonwkoh@fosstodon.org📊

@allisonkoh_

References

Adamson, Fiona, and Gerasimos Tsourapas. 2020. “At Home and Abroad: Coercion-by-Proxy as a Tool of Transnational Repression.”

Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro Oiarzabal. 2010. Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community. University of Nevada Press.

Bernal, Victoria. 2020. “African Digital Diasporas: Technologies, Tactics, and Trends: Introduction.” African Diaspora 12 (1-2): 1–10.

Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. 2009. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge University Press.

Dalmasso, Emanuela, Adele Del Sordi, Marlies Glasius, Nicole Hirt, Marcus Michaelsen, Abdulkader S. Mohammad, and Dana Moss. 2018. “Intervention: Extraterritorial Authoritarian Power.” Political Geography 64 (May): 95–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.07.003.

Dukalskis, Alexander. 2021. Making the World Safe for Dictatorship. Oxford University Press.

Dukalskis, Alexander, Saipira Furstenberg, Yana Gorokhovskaia, John Heathershaw, Edward Lemon, and Nate Schenkkan. 2022. “Transnational Repression: Data Advances, Comparisons, and Challenges.” Political Research Exchange 4 (1): 2104651. https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2022.2104651.

Esberg, Jane. 2021. “Anticipating Dissent: The Repression of Politicians in Pinochet’s Chile.” The Journal of Politics 83 (2): 689–705. https://doi.org/10.1086/710086.

Esberg, Jane, and Alexandra Siegel. 2020. “How Exile Shapes Online Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela.”

Freelon, Deen. 2018. “Computational Research in the Post-API Age.” Political Communication 35 (4): 665–68.

Holbig, Heike. 2011. “International Dimensions of Legitimacy: Reflections on Western Theories and the Chinese Experience.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 16: 161–81.

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King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 107 (2): 326–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000014.

———. 2017. “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument.” American Political Science Review 111 (3): 484–501. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000144.

Krcmaric, Daniel. 2019. “Information, Secrecy, and Civilian Targeting.” International Studies Quarterly 63 (2): 322–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqz014.

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Moss, Dana M., Marcus Michaelsen, and Gillian Kennedy. 2022. “Going After the Family: Transnational Repression and the Proxy Punishment of Middle Eastern Diasporas.” Global Networks 22 (4): 735–51.

Nyst, Carly, and Nick Monaco. 2018. “State-Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns.” Institute for the Future.

Pan, Jennifer. 2017. “How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship.” Problems of Post-Communism 64 (3-4): 167–88.

Posetti, Julie, Nabeelah Shabbir, Diana Maynard, Kalina Bontcheva, and Nermine Aboulez. 2021. “The Chilling: Global Trends in Online Violence Against Women Journalists.” UNESCO, April.

Roberts, Margaret E. 2018. Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall. Princeton University Press.

Schenkkan, Nate, and Isabel Linzer. 2021. “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression.” Freedom House (8 February 2021), Available at:{https://Freedomhouse. Org/Report/Transnational-Repression} Accessed 7.

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